The Guy In The Chair

Hi, I’m the guy in the chair. You’re probably a little confused. Normally, these stories don’t focus on the guy behind the computer. No. They center around the hero who can break the bad guy in two with a single snap of the fingers. But what you don’t know is that there is always a guy in the chair behind the hero. Welcome to my story.

Let’s start from the beginning, 3 years ago.

Crime in the city had been spiraling out of control for years. At this point, the news had even stopped covering most crimes. A brutal murder and dismemberment was just another Tuesday night now. Was someone gang raped? Yeah, that happens nightly, too. It was disgusting. Etrocious things had become so common that the city was desensitized. Even me. I’ve lived here my whole life. Looking back, I couldn’t even tell you how we got this far into chaos and despair. Police don’t venture as far into the depths of the city. It’s like they’ve given up. Just like most of the city has. Now, people have had to learn to live with it. The city was home. We had grown up here, watched it spiral to what it became, and just tried to live with it the best we could. We became spectators to what was the worst of humanity. But when things are not happening to you, it’s easy to just accept it as yet another bad thing. And then it happens to you.

It was a Monday night. I had left work at my mediocre IT job. The night felt like it was ripped from a comic book page. Rain pelted me as I walked to the subway station. It was dark. Darker than usual. Lighting was hanging high in the sky. It would crawl along the clouds like spiderwebs, reflecting off the windows of skyscrapers. While the train station was near the office, the heaviness of my rain soaked clothes made it feel longer. I ran into the station past the turnstiles to wait for the train.

Walking to the platform, I noticed the walls weren't as crowded as usual. Then I noticed my usual train pulling away as I walked to the platform. Looking at my watch, I was one minute late, and the conductor had no mercy on those who were late. Luckily, another train would arrive in a few minutes. I had leaned on a pillar to wait. Rain had puddled by my feet, dripping from my clothes.

Out of the corners of my eyes, I could see feet standing around me. I pulled my eyes away from my phone to look up to see who had come onto the platform. My eyes lifted in front of me just in time to make out a figure. Then blackness quickly filled my eyes. I stumbled back into the pillar and instinctively grabbed it to steady myself. My eyes fluttered open past the blackness to see a fist flying at me again. I slumped straight down onto the ground.

“Look at this guy,” someone said. “He’s putting up quite the fight,” another voice added. “Hopefully, he’s got more than the last guy on him,” A third voice spoke. The three voices conjoined in laughter.

I didn’t want to open my eyes again. My head throbbed. The iron taste of blood filled my mouth. Unfortunately, I opened my eyes again. I felt dizzy as the walls warped around me. One of the guys stood in front of me. His one arm slouched down next to him. Gold knuckles glistened on his hand. They were blood-tinged. Probably mine.

“How much you got on you?” the voice in front of me asked.

I was only able to grunt in response. Nothing meaningful, not the answer they wanted. How do I know that? Because a knee flew at my face, firmly slamming my head back into the pillar behind me. My eyes fluttered again just long enough to see blood pooling on the ground next to me. Another first hammed down on me, sending me to the ground from the safety of my pillar. A fury of feet began meeting my chest as I curled my hands up and over my head. I could feel what felt like hands grabbing at my pants. But the kicks didn't stop. Then I felt a sharp, cold object enter my back. Pain radiated all through my body. I don’t know how long the pelting lasted, but it eventually stopped. I rolled over onto my back. My eyes swelled with blood and tears. The lights of the station flickered above me like a cruel joke. The three voices joined in jokes, creating a cruel harmony of jokes and laughter. A final foot came flying down before landing on my skull.

I woke up in a foreign bed. Ugly speckled tiles lined the ceiling. There was a dumb triangle that said, “Call, don’t fall.” I’m not sure why, but that pissed me off. Especially because I didn’t know what was going on at first. Then it started to click. I looked over and saw my brother Miles. He sat in a chair, intently staring at me.

“You’re awake,” he said with an odd inflection. He had concern first and foremost, followed by relief, and a touch of anger laced in on the end.

“I am,” I coughed out back to him. I say coughed because that’s the noise I made. It took a lot of effort to even do that. Pain vibrated through my body. My skin stung. My head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. My hands tingled. My legs. Wait. I can’t feel my legs. Or my feet. I used my elbows to pull myself up a little. Miles jumped up from the chair, and it leaped towards the bed.

“Careful.”

“I can’t feel my fucking legs, dude.” My voice quivered.

Now, in the light, I could see Miles' face a little more. His face was red, bags dropped from his eyes. As scared as I was right now, I began to worry about Miles. He looked like shit. Tears pooled over his eyes, creating a glassy look. Then I noticed the city behind the window. Sunlight beamed behind Miles through the scraggly beige curtain. Miles clung, grabbed my hands, and squeezed tighter than I thought he ever could.

“I’m sorry.” he whispered as tears dripped from his eyes.

“They said you might be paralyzed, but I didn’t fucking believe them. I’m gonna kill whoever did this to you.”

Those words created the story I am about to tell you. My final time using my legs was walking to the place where I would lose the ability to walk forever. In the weeks and months that followed, Miles moved back to the city to my apartment. He had been there for me every day. To both of our surprise, the army granted his early discharge to care for me. Our parents had been dead for years. Neither of us had a spouse, and we never knew extended family. We only had each other.

At first, we thought I could learn to walk again. I tried therapy for weeks. Miles was by my side through it all. It was about as successful as the investigation into my attack. Like most crime in the city, there were no arrests. No justice or closure. Nightmares visited me every time I closed my eyes for more than a few seconds. While I never walked again, the people who beat the life out of me walked around freely.

Miles wanted blood. He was broken just as much as I was from this. In some ways, maybe more so. As the older brother, he felt that he needed to protect me. Somehow, he felt responsible. Soon, he thought of a way to redeem himself. He pitched the idea to me over some beers one night. First, I wrote it off as drunk talk. As the days went on, though, I could tell he was serious. I hadn’t left the apartment since my last therapy appointment. He told me that if the cops wouldn’t protect people like me and me, he would. It seems insane. He wasn’t a superhero. And me? I was a paralyzed dude in a wheelchair. After a few weeks, though, he convinced me. I wasn’t doing anything but collecting a disability check.

Thanks to my time in tech, I created a program to monitor 911 calls and scour social media for real time reports of crime and violence. It took me weeks to make the initial version. Another few weeks to get the bugs out of it. Unlike me, Miles had faith in the program. The first night was surreal. Miles left the house on his bike. He wore body armor, brought a taser, and two batons. He never spoke of his time in the army, but I always thought he saw major combat. I rarely heard from him when he was deployed. So he was also armed with the experiences he brought from deployments. Most importantly, I was in his ear, feeding him information and creepily watching him on cameras I hacked throughout the city.

Within minutes of him leaving, I was doubting everything. I stared at the camera feed, counting the endless ways this was going to go wrong. Then, an alert popped up on my screen. The program monitored 911 radio channels, looking for keywords. I clicked the alert to live-listen in. A female voice was hysterical on the phone. The 911 operator’s voice was calloused in her responses. Like she was ordering her dinner from a fast food joint rather than guiding someone through a horrific time in her life. The girl on the phone was repeatedly screaming about her boyfriend being beaten. For the first time in a while, I thought of myself. Lying on that vile floor of the train station. Bleeding, broken, and unconscious. I took a deep breath and pressed the com button on the computer.

“Okay, Miles. Here we go with this crazy idea.” I hesitate to tell him the address. I knew all too well how dangerous it could be.

“Where am I going?” his voice was almost emotionless. Well, that’s what you would think if you didn’t know Miles. No, he was focused. Locked in on the task at hand.

“3100 block of Elm. I think the caller isn't sure herself. She’s saying her boyfriend is being beaten.”

“3100 block of Elm, you said. I’m on Elm now. See, someone's looking out for us, Cam.”

It was quite the coincidence. If I had believed in a higher power, I would say they were on our side. I watched Miles through the city cams' lenses. In a separate window, I pulled up footage of cameras near the 3100 block. The street looked silent. The street lights flickered, but the buildings near them were dark. There was no soul in sight. No cabs or buses were on the streets. Nobody walked the sidewalks. Nothing. Until a single light came down the street. It was Miles.

“Cam, you see anything?” he asked.

“No, looks like you’re alone.”

Maybe we’d get out of this night alive after all.

“Wait, I hear something. Are you seeing this? Hey!” he ended his sentence with a booming roar that I’d never heard before.

On my screen, I could see a group of people dragging a girl on the ground out of an alleyway. Suddenly, their bodies turned towards Miles. What happened next was more than I expected. Even though I wasn’t religious, I said a prayer to whoever may be listening. Then I silently watched events unfold. Miles’s coms weren’t on. The city cams didn’t have any sound. It was like watching a silent movie. One of the thugs moved towards Miles with a knife in his hand. Air froze in my chest.

Suddenly, the thug’s body tensed. Squinting at the monitor, it looked like Miles had a taser in his hand. It was grainy, but then Miles swung an object, connecting with the thug’s head. He dropped. The other two thugs rushed towards Miles, releasing the girl on the ground. My eyes tracked the action on the screen relentlessly. I’m not sure how long it lasted, but I watched Miles strike one thug, then the other. He floated in between the two thugs. Blocking one, hitting the other. The first thug rose from the ground. Miles couldn’t see him; his back was turned.

More frantic than I wanted to be, I hit the comms button. “Behind you!” I belted. I figured I sounded like that guy at the movies who can’t help himself but yell at the screen. This was both the most enthralling and nerve wracking movie I had ever watched.

Miles spun so quickly he looked like he glitched on the monitor. Within seconds, the thug was on the ground again. I think Miles' clothes lined him, but it all happened so quickly. All the thugs rocked slightly on the ground. I saw myself in all three of them. I’m sure they were all in pain. They might not even be comprehending their current situation. I didn’t. Out of all of the feelings that swirled in me, sympathy wasn’t one of them.

Sure, I could feel their pain, in some ways at least. To this day, my legs feel like static. Some days I’m not even convinced my legs are there. I am, however, always keenly aware of the pain that stabs through my back every day. My hands still shake, making it even harder to navigate the world from a wheelchair. The darkness at night still haunts me. I can’t trust that the shadow doesn’t hold a lurking evil. Each night, I’m lucky if I can sleep for two hours without being thrust out of my sleep by the fear of the past. So, yeah. There was no sympathy. I hope they have to deal with a sliver of my current reality.

As I stared at the screen, Miles dragged each of them towards a small iron fence on the corner of the building. He retrieved a bag of handcuffs from his bike and cuffed each of them together, creating a chain of pitiful, bloodied thugs. The men's chains were secured to the fence.

One moment, Miles was a calculated force of aggression. But now, he was kneeling on the ground, consoling the hysterical girl. It was almost an endearing moment that provided an ounce of healing to my injured body. Watching my brother prevent another person from experiencing pain was nearly comforting.

My trance was broken by Miles’s voice. “I hope an ambulance is on its way. If not.” I interrupted his sentence. “It is.” We both spoke in a flat, direct manner.

Back to today-

As I said, that was 3 years ago. That first night, Miles not only saved that girl but stopped five other attacks. He accomplished more in one night than the police did all year. Arrests were made, innocent victims were prevented, and justice was delivered.

Today, Miles is as popular as any celebrity. No one knows who he is. But everyone is grateful. The first year was tumultuous. There were nights when I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see my brother again. I’d watch him on the cameras take beatings almost as brutal as he delivered them. He sauntered in one night, bloodied, broken both spiritually and physically. That was the only time he had ever failed to protect someone.

As the years went on, he got stronger, smarter, and more brutal. More importantly, he became inspiring. Others like him began to storm the streets at night. Each of them protects their unknown brothers and sisters who also call the city home. The city banded together. We never found out much about these others. All thanks to Miles. He simply became known as The Vigilante. This wasn’t a comic book. This was real life.

As for me, I stayed behind the screen. Each night, watching Miles as he rode out into the darkness searching for the vulnerable. Protecting those in need of protection. Delivering justice to the innocents who waited too long. I wonder how long this routine will last. I already paid this city with my ability to walk. Would Miles pay with his life? Doubt didn’t last long, though. There was a strange addiction to these nights.

My legs still haven’t moved in three years. But this chair offers comfort. Some may view this chair as a prison. I don’t. This chair is as much of a home as the walls of my apartment are. Thanks to Miles and those whom he inspired, I wheel around the city streets almost comfortably now. Almost. Whenever I get too comfortable, the calluses on my hands from pushing my chair remind me to keep my guard up. Then I wonder. Are those three guys who put me in this chair still out there? Or are they in their own version of this chair?

Every night, though, I make sure I’m home. Ready to watch over Miles as he watches over the city. He dons his gear, reassures me of his return, and breaks through the darkness on his bike. I stay ever vigilant, watching his every move through the city cams' eyes. Sometimes, fear still creeps in, and I push deep down to get through the night. These days, though, he never seems to be alone for long. Another person, like Miles, seems to be there when he needs it. Standing alongside him, watching his back. But, they’ll never watch his back like me.

Now you know my story. The guy in the chair. The guy who watches the inspirational vigilante heal our city one night at a time. While no one else in the city may know what to call him. I will forever be grateful to call him my brother.